by Melanie Rawn
Abb Shagara regarded his mother narrowly for a time. Then: “Very well. The Geysh Dushann only. But I shall accept Azzad as our kin.”
“When did you hear me object? You do not listen, my son. Azzad alMa’aliq is indeed kin-worthy. He is civilized and honorable—for a barbarian.”
“And therefore,” Abb Shagara said, “he will be treated as Shagara. In all things.”
There was some significance to this that Azzad didn’t understand, but by now bruises and welts and exhaustion were making his head reel. It must have shown in his face or his eyes, for Leyliah was instantly at his side, helping him to lie down.
“No more drugged wine, I beg of you,” he muttered.
“You’ll sleep the day through without it,” she assured him with a smile in her voice, and added, “Aqq Azzad,” becoming the first of the Shagara to call him brother.
He opened his eyes. She was indeed lovely, with eyes like a fawn and skin like sage honey. “You are Oushta Leyliah now to me, yes?”
“Challa, one day soon.”
“I prefer ‘oushta.’ All my sisters were as beautiful as you—and all my aunts were a million years old.” His eyes squeezed shut, and weakness threatened tears.
“How did you escape death? Ah, I can guess—a woman warned you.”
“No. But it did have to do with a woman.”
“This much is obvious. Sleep now, Aqq Azzad. We will see to everything.”
It so happened that when representatives of the Ammarad came to Dayira Azreyq to admit failure, the enraged Sheyqa Nizzira was unable to ride out at the head of her own army to seek Azzad, for the fierce tribes of the mountainous north threatened Rimmal Madar. A century and more of peace, founded on honor pledges with the alMa’aliq, had shattered now that the al-Ma’aliq were no more. The Sheyqa needed all her warriors to defend the northern border, a task that would occupy her for many years. She knew victories and losses, and even a wound to her own exalted person when a stray arrow nicked her in the leg. But the injury that festered was the knowledge that there yet lived an al-Ma’aliq.
Her chief eunuch tried to console her by saying that whether or not Azzad lived was of no consequence. Alone in a barren land, surely the idle wastrel Azzad would soon be dead.
Nizzira was not consoled. But with war raging in the north, and not a man to spare from battle, she could only rely on her cousins the Ammarad to honor their promise to kill the last al-Ma’aliq.
—FERRHAN MUALEEF, Deeds of Il-Kadiri, 654
4
Azzad never found out just how Meryem killed the Geysh Dushann—but that it was Meryem who killed him he had no doubt. Neither did he doubt that her son watched while she did it. When next he saw the two of them, there was something different about the boy’s eyes; he was becoming a man who understood the burdens of responsibility. Za’avedra el-Ibrafidia would have thanked Acuyib on her knees to see such signs in her son Azzad.
A day later, he was invited to Abb Shagara’s tent for the evening meal. The first thing Meryem said was, “I have realized, Aqq Azzad, that it was by my fault that you were attacked. I ask you to forgive me. It was I who spoke your name that night.”
He shrugged away the apology. “You thought him sleeping from the potion given him. There can be no blame upon you, Challa Meryem.”
Fadhil bowed his head. “I must have mixed it wrong.” Then, after a slight hesitation, he added, “I have told them what you know.”
“What I guessed,” Azzad corrected politely.
Meryem shook her head. “No, I have grown careless. And you are not to blame for the potion, Fadhil. I have long worried about the strength of this drug, and lately I have been using less in the mixture for fear of its power. But from now on, it will be as strong as before.”
“I beg you, do not test it on me!” Azzad’s plea won a smile from her at last.
“I regret to say that is impossible,” she replied. “You must leave us tomorrow.”
Ayia, so soon? He had been so anxious to get moving, get on with his life and his vengeance—yet now he was reluctant to abandon these people who had become friends.
“We will give you water and food to last five days,” Abb Shagara said. “The provisions will take you to the first village northwest of here. Continue due north to the coast, and the way will be easy to any number of cities.”
“Which is precisely where the Sheyqa will be looking for me,” Azzad pointed out.
“Have no worries about this Sheyqa. We will give you many protections.”
The charms he’d seen the men making? He tried very hard not to look skeptical. They believed in the power of the tokens, and he could not insult his friends with open doubt. So he asked, “Is there no way to travel directly west? I have seen trade items from that country, brought by caravan and ship to Rimmal Madar.” Not terribly impressive items—blankets and a few spices—but it was trade he could understand and use to his advantage.
“Ayia, north, west, there’s not that much difference,” said Abb Shagara with a shrug. “They are all barbarians, but I thought to spare you the worst of them.”
“In the north,” Meryem explained, “people live in cities that are neither clean nor comfortable, but at least one may walk unhindered by towering walls.”
“In the west,” her son continued, “they live either in small villages perched on mountainsides—and, to my eye, likely to fall off at any minute!—or in huge fortifications with walls that go on forever.”
“The northern cities have walls, do they not?” Azzad had never heard of a city that didn’t. The invaders with their Mother and Son religion had made walls necessary.
Abb Shagara made a dismissive gesture. “Boundary markers, nothing more imposing. There is no need. They are the friends of the Shagara.”
As was Azzad—and they were still speaking of defending his life with a few weights of beaten brass and tin. Acuyib help him.
“But you must go where you wish, of course,” finished Abb Shagara. “Five days will take you to the western villages. Whichever direction you take, you will be protected.” He turned to his mother. “There should be such protections at the dawa’an sheymma, to preclude any more incidents.”
“Abominable,” she muttered. “That the very sanctuary of healing must be defended against malefactors.”
Azzad tried to keep his expression pleasantly neutral. When he saw Fadhil and Leyliah exchanging amused glances, he knew that his face had betrayed him.
The girl said, “Aqq Azzad does not believe.”
“Perhaps he requires a demonstration,” Fadhil suggested.
Abb Shagara sprang to his feet from piled pillows. “Wonderful! Fadhil, attack me!”
“Akkil Akkem Akkim Akkar!” exclaimed Meryem, in the manner of all mothers who desire their offspring’s complete attention.
And, in the manner of all children whose mothers propose to spoil their fun, Abb Shagara pouted. “But Azzad needs to be shown—”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“I believe implicitly,” Azzad told them.
Leyliah knew he lied. “Fadhil?” she said, catching the young man’s eye. And swift as summer lightning the eating-knife in her hand flew across the platters of food, directly at Fadhil’s chest.
He did nothing. The knife struck his bleached wool shirt and tumbled harmlessly to his lap. Then he reached inside his clothing to bring out a silvery rectangular plaque about the size of his thumb. On it were inscribed symbols such as Azzad had seen the boys practicing with the mouallima.
“This means ‘defense,’” he said, pointing to one of the figures—talishann, Azzad recalled. “This is for safety, and this negates iron’s anger.”
“But she wasn’t truly angry with you,” Abb Shagara teased merrily. “How could she be, when—”
“Enough!” snapped Meryem. Fadhil and Leyliah were blushing. “It matters nothing if Azzad believes or does not believe. The fact is that what we shall give him—added to what has been made for his horse—will
keep him safe.”
“Can’t I show him?” Abb Shagara begged. “Please, Mother?”
“No. And don’t sulk.”
A look of mischievous cunning appeared on his face. “Surely a very little demonstration will suffice.” And he reached over to a tray, taking a silver cup such as Azzad had used the first time he’d sat in this tent. He tossed it at Azzad, who caught it easily. “Lie to me.”
“Your pardon, Abb Shagara?”
“Tell me a lie. Anything will do. I’ll ask a question, shall I? What is the name of your horse?”
Hiding a smile—and perhaps a tolerant sigh—Azzad opened his mouth to say Barghoutz, silently begging the stallion’s pardon for the insult of calling him a flea.
What came out of his mouth was, “Khamsin.”
Abb Shagara crowed with laughter at the surprise Azzad could feel scrawled all over his face. “You see? You remember the first time we drank qawah together here? You held that cup, and you told no lies.”
“I—” He thought he might say something polite. Instead: “I don’t believe it.”
“I know you don’t,” said Meryem. She rose and took the cup from his hand. “Now that you’ve had your little game, my son, please allow Azzad to get some sleep. He has an early start in the morning.”
“Another few questions, and he would have believed,” the boy complained.
“Enough!” Meryem ordered, and he subsided.
The next morning Azzad went on his way, with the whole tribe to watch. Only Abb Shagara, Meryem, Kabir, Fadhil, and Leyliah spoke to him in farewell, but he saw the smiles and sensed the goodwill—and their chagrin that while in their care he had nearly been assassinated. Curiously, there was no resentment that now, because of him, a stranger, the fearsome Geysh Dushann were their openly declared enemies. Truly, Acuyib had made their hearts more open and generous than the hearts of his own people, whom he had known to betray friends for the price of a basket of bread.
He saddled Khamsin—who behaved himself although he was plainly eager for a long gallop—and took a moment to inspect the new decorations on the saddle. Fadhil stood stroking the stallion’s neck, watching Azzad finger each of thirteen palm-sized tin disks.
“One for each moon of the year,” Fadhil explained. “It is traditional with our own horses. Abb Shagara says we cannot tell you what each means, or you will trust in them too much and not have a care to yourself.”
“I see. If I knew that arrows would glance off Khamsin’s hide, I’d ride right into an army of archers?”
“Something like that. Not even the Shagara can protect against stupidity.”
“I’ve never had a reputation for being wise, but I promise I’ll try not to be foolish.” He smiled and grasped the young man’s arm. “You’ve been a good friend to me, Fadhil, and because we are friends, I’d like to give you some advice. Marry Leyliah.”
His skin paled beneath its golden sheen, and his eyes went wide. “Marry—?”
“Yes. You’re both healers, you have an eye for each other—and no wonder, you’re handsome and she’s exquisite—”
“I cannot,” he whispered, glancing away.
“Whyever not? Surely sometimes you marry within the tribe. You’re not close cousins, are you?”
“In the sixth degree.”
“Well, then—”
“She—will find a husband from another tribe.”
“I tell you she wants you. I’ve seen that look in a woman’s eye often enough to know what it means. It would do my heart good to think of you married and—”
“I cannot. Please do not speak of it ever again.” Fadhil gave him an anguished look, gripped both Azzad’s hands for an instant, and hurried away.
Chal Kabir came forward, clasped his hands briefly, and advised him to be careful. Then Meryem and Abb Shagara approached, the latter with a look of longing in his eyes as he regarded Khamsin—like a little boy who desperately desires to climb a date palm, yet fears that he might fall.
“When I return,” Azzad said, “I’ll teach you to ride him.”
“Me?” The big eyes blinked. “On his back?”
“It’s easy, once you learn how.” Turning to Meryem, he bowed. “Lady, I thank you.”
“Travel safely.” That was all she said before leaving her son alone with Azzad.
“You would truly teach me how to ride?” the young man asked.
“Truly. When there is more time. Abb Shagara—”
“Aqq Akkil. Or Akkem, or whichever of my other names you prefer!”
“Aqq Akkim, then, for I have learned that you are indeed wise.” He hesitated, then said softly, “Teach some of this wisdom to Fadhil, so that he’ll have the courage to ask to marry Leyliah.”
“Marry?” he exclaimed with astonishment identical to Fadhil’s. And his reply was the same, too: “He cannot.”
When a man and woman cared for each other, and there was no impediment in bloodline or wealth or status, why not get married? He frowned at Abb Shagara. “But they obviously—”
The father of his people shook his head. “It is not spoken of. Not even to you, who know some of our secrets. You have the map of where we will be from season to season?”
“Folded in my memory.”
“Good.” Drawing himself up, Abb Shagara said for everyone else to hear, “Acuyib’s blessings upon you and all that you think, all that you say, and all that you do.”
“Acuyib’s Glory be with you and all Shagara forever. And I promise that I’ll be back with wondrous gifts to thank you for my life.” Low-voiced, he added with a wink, “And to teach you how to ride.”
They exchanged bows, and as Azzad straightened up, Abb Shagara placed a chain around his neck. A finger-length brass plaque set with several gemstones rested at the center of his breast.
“This will protect you, so that you return to us.”
Azzad bowed his thanks and told himself that when he ran out of pearls, he’d still have something to sell to keep himself and Khamsin fed. So perhaps the gift was protection of a sort after all.
As the whole tribe called out farewells, he put out a hand to soothe the stallion. He needn’t have bothered: Khamsin thought the praise was for him. He arched his neck and pranced after Azzad mounted, and without being signaled to do so reared to show off the thin streak of white on his belly.
“Flaunt it for the mares some other time,” Azzad advised him, waved to the crowd, and rode away.
It wasn’t until that evening, when he unsaddled Khamsin, that he realized the charms were not tin but silver, and the pectoral about his own neck was not polished brass but solid gold.
The next five days passed placidly enough. There was a trail and a rock shelter the first night, and more trail and a fencing of thorns on the second. The Shagara had even taken into account the time he would make riding a horse rather than sitting in a wagon.
The trail he followed was a double rut in the rocky desert, distinguishable as a trail only because it had slightly fewer stones than the surrounding wasteland. The third night he reached the skirts of some low mountains and camped beside a trickle of water below a cliff, staring up at the extravagant stars. He missed the soft sounds of the Shagara camp, the gentle music of the wind chimes. But on the fourth day, even with the silver on Khamsin’s saddle and the gold on his own breast to remind him, the time spent with the Shagara began to seem dreamlike. An eighteen-year-old boy called “Father” who ruled a whole tribe. Trinkets guaranteed to turn aside arrows and swords.
Absurd.
On the fifth afternoon he caught up with a family returning from a visit to their nomadic relations. Parents, two sons and their wives, an unwed daughter, and six squalling toddlers were all happy to be going home to civilization.
“Bayyid Qarhia is not a great city, not like Beit Za’ara,” said the father, “but it’s certainly better than the squalor of my uncle’s tents! Of course,” he laughed, “my uncle would slit his own throat before he’d set foot in any town.”<
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Azzad surmised that this Beit Za’ara was the largest community in this man’s experience. Two hundred inhabitants at the most, he decided. In Dayira Azreyq there lived two hundred times that number.
But where there was a town, there was money. Probably not a lot of money, but enough to get him started. Precisely what he intended to start was as yet unclear. But from the way the young men eyed Khamsin with that combination of fascination and wariness that Azzad was coming to expect, it would have something to do with the stallion.
The women and children rode in a large wagon drawn by two of those monstrous horses. Azzad could not believe that there was so little contact with eastern lands that Khamsin’s breed was unknown to them. But the Shagara had never heard of Rimmal Madar, just as Azzad had never heard of the Shagara. Though nothing more formidable than The Steeps lay between the two lands, he had begun to think that there were reasons why the peoples had never mingled. These possible reasons occupied his thoughts for long stretches of the road, and eventually he thought he might have an answer. If the sheyqas had an agreement with their desert-dwelling cousins that The Steeps were the border, none would pass through that were not approved. The Ammarad would keep to their side out of habit, preference, and understanding with their royal kin. And they would keep everyone else out of Rimmal Madar, as well.
Further, Azzad speculated, the sheyqas would not wish the Geysh Dushann generally known—or, indeed, known at all. What better assassins than one’s own blood relations, whom nobody had ever even heard of? And Azzad was abruptly, bitterly certain that just such assassins had advised Nizzira on which poison to use on the al-Ma’aliq men and where to set the fires at Beit Ma’aliq.
Dragging his mind from the past, he patted Khamsin’s neck and compared him point by point with the huge desert horses. They were taller, broader, tougher, stronger. Logic dictated that they must be able to survive long periods without much food or water. Yet when they did feed, they must devour half a man’s monthly earnings. They were hardier than Khamsin, but slower; more powerful, but more expensive; and the evil gleam in their eyes boded ill for those who trained them.